Drop-Down Menu

Sunday, November 16, 2014

You are eleven months old, and I'm woefully unprepared, in every way. I've barely started planning your birthday party, I have no idea what we're going to eat or what you're going to wear and I have only the barest idea of a theme. I'm not ready to leave your infant-hood behind. I'm not ready to have a toddler instead of a baby.

Because you're definitely a toddler now. Because you're walking. Because you insist on growing up no matter how much I wish to freeze time.

Yes, you're taking five or seven or ten steps regularly now. You're still crawling more than you walk, but the ratio changes every day and I know you'll be a full-on walker shortly. While I do miss your baby-ness, I absolutely love the smile of pride that breaks out across your face and the delighted laughter that comes whenever you sucessfully walk.

You've also added "mama" and "dada" to your babbling, so now you babble with "mama," "dada," and "baba." You seem to say "mama" more when I'm around, but I'm not ready to call that your first word yet. I also think you're trying to say "book," because you'll go from babbling, "mamamamamamama" to "ba!" when I pull out a book.

You also deliberately sign "milk" now and it's so cute I can barely handle it. You put your chubby fist up and squeeze your hand and then are positively elated when you get milk (nursing) in return.

You've also started throwing tantrums, which is as hilarious as it is sad as it is frustrating. You really get into them too - in your high chair, you'll rock your whole body forward and back violently, which makes the high chair start scooting across the floor, which makes you forget why you were made and start laughing.

This has never happened before or since - you fell asleep in your high chair!

You're a great eater - last night we had peppery chicken and asparagus with a cream sauce over spaghetti squash and you ate more than your big sister. And you love to drink out of a sippy cup. (You still put non-food items in your mouth, constantly. But not to swallow them - you just like chewing them and holding them in your mouth. You're gonna be a gum chewer.)

We took you and your sister to the pumpkin patch, and you loved looking at everything and taking it all in. You loved sitting on the bouncer and touching the pumpkins and watching the dog show.

You also had your first taste of ice cream - really of anything sweet and sugary like that - and you immediately freaked out and wanted to eat it all and threw a legitimate fit when I took it away.

I also took you guys to the zoo a couple times, and you played with the goats, and you loved it...until one jumped over you and knocked you flat on your back.

Still not sleeping through the night. Your dad is off work for a few weeks now, so we're going to dive into sleep training at some point. Or so I keep telling myself. It needs to happen; it's just so emotionally hard to do, even though I know you're okay.

Just before Halloween you, your sister, and I took a bus trip out to Dubuque to visit your Nana. You did really well (read: you slept most of the time) until the very last twenty minutes when you suddenly spit up everything in your stomach all over youself and the car seat. I felt awful for you, because there wasn't much I could do at the moment. We spent a fun week in Dubuque, and you seemed fine (minus a few more spitting up incidents here and there) until you suddenly got a 103 degree fever and started rapidly breathing really shallowly. I took you to the ER and you were diagnosed with a bladder infection. Two (TWO!!) big shots of antibiotics later, plus oral antibiotics at home, and you were feeling better within a few hours - just as the ER doctor predicted you would. Even with being sick, you had a ton of fun with Nana. We went to the park, we went to a Halloween parade (which you watched with rapt attention), we went trick-or-treating on a boat (at the Missisippi River Museum and Aquarium), went to a natutre center (which you loved), and we read so. many. books.

All of these pictures are from Dubuque.

Sleeping at the ER. :(

Halloween Parade.

At the nature center.

For actual Halloween, you were a Cabbage Patch doll, and I'm sorry to say you didn't really get to experience any of the "real" Halloween events, because you fell asleep really early and slept through it all. But we did take you around to show you off to the great-grandparents.

You love trying to steal my phone, you love love love love love to "read" books and to be read to, you love playing in sand, you love anything and everything your sister has (especially her clip dolls), you love playing musical instruments, and you love knocking everything off the shelves at the end of the kitchen counter. You really love that; you do it like a hundred times a day.

And we love you, baby girl. (You're still a baby for another month!!!) This morning, your sister whispered to you, "Emmeline, I missed you so much when you were in mommy's tummy and not born yet." You were so meant to be here.

One morning, Carys went into your crib when you first woke up to keep you company